CMPSCI 250: Introduction to Computation

David Mix Barrington

Spring 2017

This is the home page for CMPSCI 250.
CMPSCI 250 is the undergraduate core course in
discrete mathematics and will deal with logic, elementary number theory,
proof by induction, recursion on trees, search algorithms,
finite state machines, and a bit of computability.

The course is primarily intended for undergraduates in computer science
and related majors such as mathematics or computer engineering. CMPSCI 187
(programming with data structures) and MATH 132 (Calculus II) are corequisites
and in fact most students in the course have already taken both.

The course meets for three lecture meetings a week, Monday,
Wednesday, and Friday 1:25-2:30, in ELAB II 119.

There is one discussion meeting per week for each of the four
sections, at various times on Friday mornings indicated on SPIRE.
Most discussions will have a written assignment which you
will carry out in groups.
Discussion attendance is required,
so that missing a discussion
will incur a grade penalty. The TA's and I will cover the sections in various
combinations,
so they should be as interchangeable as we can make them.

The textbook is the current draft of my in-progress book,
Discrete Mathematics: A Foundation for Computer Science. This
will
be available at Collective Copies in Amherst Center, sometime around
the start of term.
Prior versions of the textbook that were intended for CMPSCI
250
may be used -- the most recent versions of the book differ only by
the correction of some minor errors.

The course is using the iClicker system, and the Moodle course
management system. Basic information about the course will be on this
site, and specifics of the course will be off of the Moodle main page
when it is established soon.

(20 Jul) I have finally posted the
text and
solutions for the final exam.
Aggregate results for the exam and course will follow soon.

(18 Apr) The text and
solutions for the second midterm
are now available.

(17 Apr) I'm working on texts and solutions for the
second midterm and may have them up soon. In the meantime here
are the stats on the exam I already emailed to students in the
course. The scale was A = 93 and C = 60. The high was 109, the
median 74, and the low 33. Here are the number of students
falling
within each grade range:

A+ (96-109): 34

A (91-95): 9

A- (85-90): 15

B+ (80-84): 18

B (74-79): 23

B- (69-73): 27

C+ (63-68): 25

C (58-62): 18

C- (52-57): 12

D+ (47-51): 5

D (41-46): 5

F (33-40): 2

(19 Mar) The first midterm
and its solution are now posted.
The exams have been returned, and grades placed on Moodle. The
high scores were three perfect 110's, the low was 42, and the
median was 81. There were 29 A+ papers (98+), 15 A (93-97), 25
A- (88-92), 26 B+ (83-87), 22 B (78-82), 34 B- (73-77), 21 C+
(68-72), 9 C (63-67), 8 C- (58-62), 2 D+ (53-57), 5 D (48-52), and
2 F (42-47).

(13 Jan) The goals and requirements pages are up.

(12 Jan) I am putting up only a preliminary version of the
course website today. The full version of last spring's website is
available here and has exams with
solutions
and a full syllabus. The link above is to the lecture slides from the
Spring 2014 offering of this course -- our lectures this term will be similar
and slides from this term will be posted on Moodle. This offering of CMPSCI 250 will be very similar to my recent ones.